http://www.rawstory.com/...
According to the above link, "A northwest Indiana Republican has backtracked on outrageous comments he made on Facebook about poor people.
John Johnston, who is challenging Democratic state Rep. Chuck Moseley for the 10th District seat, said during a social media discussion on poverty that “no one has the guts to just let them wither and die.”
He is right but he is also wrong.
In the 26 years I have lived here, I have seen America become meaner and uglier but it was always there, just beneath the surface. When we came, we moved in with my aunt and uncle and their two kids. My aunt would buy food and label it "guangho, don't touch."
Her kids fared no better. Donna felt that 7:30 was too early for waking up, so Robbie got up, went to the kitchen, climbed a stool and poured himself some cheerios. He was ten.
I should add that this was a middle class, middle income, suburban white couple. This wasn't some stereotypical Brooklyn housing project, or a West Virginia hollow or a deserted trailer park in Arizona. This was suburban Philadelphia. This was the kind of place Randy Newman sang about in "little boxes". Donna was not sickly, malnourished, incapacitated, struggling with mental illness or addiction- she just didn't care and couldn't be bothered to fake it.
Social media, mobile phones, the ability to always be on and always broadcast our lives and our thoughts has ripped away the veneer of respectability. It is a little bit like what Louis CK was talking about- that you'd say things to a fellow driver on the road that you wouldn't say to a fellow elevator passenger- but amped up. As if these devices allow us to just let it all hang out behind the filmiest veneer.
So John is right, in that we wouldn't have the guts to say that poor people should just die- but we'd damned sure tweet it. Deep down, its who we as humans really are. All the rest is just pretense.